


The Robbery

by Zeke Black (istia)



Series: Rare Pairs [2]
Category: Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e19 The Robbery, M/M, Old West, POV Austin Peale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-27
Updated: 2002-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:13:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to the angsty episode <em>The Robbery</em> as Austin reflects on the changes in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Robbery

###### Curtis Wells, Montana Territory | 1881

Austin Peale entered the dark Ambrosia Club, pausing to look around, taking in the silence that gave the empty saloon a deceptive air of peacefulness. Moving to the bar, his eyes fixed on the spot behind it where Taylor had been found. In the murky light slanting in the south windows from a half-moon, the bloodstains on the boards seemed like nothing more than an innocuous patch of darker shadow like the other wells of black that wreathed the large room. Yet a man had lain there unconscious a night before as his life's blood seeped from his body with no one present who could help him.

Austin blinked his eyes away. He struck a match that cracked like a shot in the quiet and paused to listen. No answering sound reached his ears. He lit the lamp on the bar, keeping the wick turned low, and made his way up the stairs with practiced assurance, hardly needing the aid of the dim light. Black shadow specters danced around him, a mute fantastic swirl of figures and shapes. The air was chill enough to make his nostrils flare. It stung to think of a man lying in this place hurt and helpless in the night, alone, feeling abandoned. Feeling betrayed.

The second door on the left down the corridor at the top of the stairs was shut, but the brass knob turned soundlessly. He pushed the door open with caution, prepared for anything, half-expecting to see the barrel of a gun and hear the heavy click of a hammer being drawn back. Instead, more silence and darkness greeted him. He stepped inside and scanned the room as he pushed the door to. Well-oiled hinges made no sound.

The place was in an unusual state of disarray. Books, papers, a plate smeared with congealed food, a glass half-filled with whiskey, and ash pans overflowing with cigar butts cluttered the damask-covered table. The lead glass humidor was tipped on its side at the edge of the table. Both its cherry-wood top and several expensive cigarillos lay on the floor. Mosby's torn ruffled shirt was thrown on a chair; the tails of his long leather coat trailed off the trunk onto the floor. The air was stale with smoke and a vague taint of uncleanness.

As he walked in, his foot kicked something and he looked down to see an empty bottle. He nudged it aside and continued forward to place the lamp on the table among the debris. His eyes flicked to the insensible figure sprawled on the bed, but he pulled them away and moved to the windows. He pulled the drapes closed with controlled tugs. Turning away, he paused to shed his jacket and hat on a chair. Only then did he approach the bed.

The bedside table held another partially filled glass and a bottle of Kentucky bourbon a quarter consumed. Sticky rings dotted the marble top of a table usually kept militarily clean. Hard to believe so much could go to hell in one cataclysmic day.

Finally, steeling himself, he turned his eyes to the man in the bed.

Clay Mosby lay sprawled on his stomach mostly on top of the bedclothes. The Jacquard spread was bunched haphazardly over his upper body where he'd apparently tried to drag it over himself, but he was otherwise uncovered. Other than a coat and tie, he was fully dressed right down to his knee boots in the clothes he'd changed into to go after Bill McSween. Austin closed his eyes for a moment before looking again at the unconscious man. The bruising on Mosby's forehead and the swelling around his visible eye had darkened in the past few hours; lines of tension and weariness between his brows and around his eyes were deep-set even in sleep, visible even in the poor light. Just discernible through straggled dark hair was a small cut on his temple near the hairline. The gash looked as though it had been roughly washed, but not properly seen to.

Austin turned away to cross to the washstand. He blinked at a bowl of pinkish water sitting atop it. Drops of dried blood as vivid as poppies spattered the gilt-edged porcelain rim. Giving himself a mental shake, he emptied the bowl into the slop bucket and poured fresh water from the ewer. He took the bowl and a couple of linen towels from the shelf on the stand to the bedside table, nudging the unholstered Remington to the back to make room.

He removed Mosby's boots, pulling the dulled, soft leather off the slack legs and feet without difficulty. He left the wool socks on for warmth, though they felt stiff with sweat and dirt. Working efficiently, he eased Mosby onto his back and unfastened his pants, vest, and shirt. He slipped each item off the supine figure without resistance. Mosby stirred with a sigh, his lashes fluttering, only as Austin laid him back onto the bed after removing the final garment.

"What?" Mosby's voice was a thick mumble, just this side of incomprehensible.

Austin watched impassively as Mosby scrabbled for the gun in his swim toward consciousness. Knocking a hand against the bottle, Mosby flinched as it clunked against the bowl occupying most of the bedside table. Mosby's eyes were open now, blinking in an apparent effort to seize awareness from the haze of exhaustion and alcoholic stupor holding him captive.

Austin's own flinch at the flash of startled panic on the bruised face was inside. He took a moment to collect himself, then spoke in a low, cool voice.

"Lie still. It's all right."

He caught the flailing hand and pulled it away from the table. He felt Mosby freeze at his voice, and Austin let him pull his hand away.

"You."

Mosby laid his arm over his eyes. Beneath the arm, his face looked vulnerable and oddly exposed. His Virginia accent was thick when he spoke again, the way it became when he was tired or feeling beset.

"What the hell are you doin' here? Get out, and take that blasted light with you."

"Lift your butt and get under the covers. You're freezing."

Mosby dropped his arm to the pillow and tilted his head to look down the length of his body, covered in nothing now but his muslin drawers and his socks. Gooseflesh pebbled his chest and arms.

His voice was sardonic. "Well, I wasn't before you removed all my clothing. Get the hell out, Austin; you're not welcome here. I thought I made that clear."

Ignoring him, Austin pushed a hand under the small of his back and shoved upwards. Mosby's instinctive effort to escape his touch made his body rise sufficiently from the bed to allow Austin to jerk the bedding down. Not caring if he made a dog's dinner of the lace, linen, and fine wool bedclothes, he yanked them back up and over the almost naked man before Mosby could register a more effective protest than a spluttered curse. Still ignoring him, Austin seated himself on the bed and dipped the corner of a towel in the water.

As the cloth neared Mosby's head, his hand flew up, protective, defensive. Austin ignored the warning. He pushed the hand to the pillow with an ease that hurt and held it trapped there, his larger hand and upright position readily overcoming the little resistance Mosby was able to muster.

"I told you to get out."

"That cut hasn't been seen to properly. I told you you should see the doctor."

"The day I do what you tell me is the day I'll be put in my coffin."

"Like Taylor."

Mosby's eyes flinched shut. Austin applied the cloth to the small, scabbed cut. He left the dry part alone, working rather at the pus-laden area hidden in the hairline. Warm water would have done a better job, but this was better than nothing. After cleaning away the unhealthy matter, he soaked a clean corner of the towel in bourbon and pressed it to the laceration. He folded the towel, then, and held it bunched as a shield above Mosby's eye as he dripped more liquor directly onto the opened wound.

Mosby swore, but he didn't use the hand Austin had freed to interfere. He simply shut his eyes and accepted, his body tense with the odd submissiveness Austin had noted in similar circumstances. Sometime during the knocks Mosby had taken during the war and since, he'd seemed to have learned when it was best simply to endure, biding his time to act when it would be most effective. Above all else, and no matter what hell he found himself in, Mosby was a survivor.

Austin vaguely attributed the response to whatever had happened to Mosby in the Union prison camp during the final year of the war. He suspected, though without ever being sure, that Mosby's nightmares were of that time: when they weren't of his return to Virginia upon his release to find his home destroyed and his family butchered. That those nightmares were memories of Mosby's year in the camp or his return to the plantation: when they weren't of his dead wife Mary...or of Hannah.

Compassion had never had a place in his dealings with Mosby, and Austin nurtured none. Mosby and Call and his father weren't the only ones transformed on the pyre of Hannah's death. Sentimentality had been burned out of him, too, along with naïveté and an innocence he'd never realized about himself until it was gone, leaving ironic self-knowledge in its wake.

With unvarnished vision, he knew Mosby was a tough, unprincipled, self-serving bastard. He'd always known it. As he folded the towel and washed the dried blood from the tangled waves of hair at Mosby's temple, he recalled the scalding fury he'd felt when he'd seen Mosby kiss Hannah when she was mourning Call that time they'd all thought Call was dead. He'd wanted to smash Mosby's suave face into a pulp, wanted to make sure the sneaking Reb dog never looked at his sister that way again. He'd wanted to defend Hannah's honor, and Call's, and protect his father from the shame. He'd wanted to wrap them all up in a big protective bubble where the likes of Colonel Francis Clay Mosby couldn't ever touch them, wouldn't ever dirty any of them.

And there was irony for you.

He smoothed the hair away from Mosby's bruised face and dropped the cloth into the bowl. He wiped his hands dry, then lifted the covers and surveyed the heavily bruised left side of Mosby's ribcage where McSween and Prentice had put the boot in during the robbery. He didn't mean to touch, but his fingers were drawn to skim over the pale skin at the edges of the mottled flesh. Mosby pulled in a sharp breath that made his ribs as stark as a boat's curved timbers and shifted away. He grabbed the covers with a finality Austin didn't contest.

"You're not a doctor, Austin, so don't even think about proddin' me."

"You still need to see Cleese. There might be something broken."

"Nothin's broken. Not that it's any of your damned business." Mosby's voice was fading, his eyes drifting shut again from the combination of exhaustion and alcohol. His accent was increasingly exaggerated, the vowels drawn out and honey-smooth, the consonants liquid.

"Nope." Austin kept his voice as calm as his hands as he wrung out the towel and washed the rest of Mosby's face. "None of my business."

He lifted the heavy hair from Mosby's forehead, smoothing it back. It was greasy to his touch, musky with too much residue of the Macassar oil Mosby used to keep the thick long waves in some kind of order. Mosby had cleaned himself up to bring in McSween, but that hadn't included a bath. His body was rank--at least for Mosby. He smelled of mud, sweat, and horse rather than lilac water, laundry bluing, and the smoke from rum-dipped cigarillos. He smelled like an ordinary man. Austin drew in the scent, knowing Mosby would be back to himself soon, with trips to the bath house every second or third day and fresh linen every morning.

Mosby would be back to himself in every other way, too, no longer remotely vulnerable, except when he chose.

"What're you doin' here, Austin?"

He had to strain to hear the mumble. He paused to let an answer find its way into his brain. He washed the unbruised right side of Mosby's face from his temple to the beard that shadowed his jaw. For a moment, he rested his hand against the softness of the short beard.

"We both know why I'm here." As he spoke, his eyes drifted up to stare across the large room, though he saw neither the clutter nor the elegant furniture and flocked wallpaper, but only a gray blankness.

Mosby sighed, curling away onto his uninjured side, his now clean face burrowing into the lace-trimmed pillow.

"Because I pay you. I pay you a damn good wage to look after this town, and me."

Austin looked sharply back at him. He couldn't think of a thing to say.

Mosby's voice dipped lower, to a ribbon of sound muffled in the pillow. "You let me down. You weren't there. Taylor died, and I.... You sold me out."

Compassion and sentimentality had been seared from him, but the capacity to hurt hadn't diminished at all since Hannah's death. He reflected again on that odd fact. His sister had died and the world had fallen apart. His father had lost his wits. Call had disappeared for two years and returned changed, as hardened and deadly in his way as Mosby, the two constantly at loggerheads with Austin torn between the divergent pulls on him. Even the town had become something cankerous that Hannah would never have recognized.

Even he had become something far other than what he'd been in the golden years before Hannah's death. He hadn't recognized them as golden years then, of course, but that was another of the ironies life had delivered him since. He could still hurt, however, and did, far too often, and he wished for the hundredth time he'd lost that emotion along with the rest.

He stood, the toll of his own exhaustion making itself known in the drag in his muscles. He took the bowl to the washstand and poured the murky contents into the slop bucket, then set the bowl on the stand with a thump that sounded loud in the quiet room. In the mirror, he could see Mosby's curled figure in the bed, the fancy sheets covering most of him. All Austin could see was the tumbled hair and a glimpse of dark lashes and dark beard framing a pale cheek. He flicked his eyes away and caught his own reflection instead. Barely three years since Hannah died, but he looked like he'd aged ten. He stared into his empty eyes and felt hollowed out inside, a gourd rather than a man.

Yet he was alive when all was said and done, still vital and breathing, and that was a miracle in its way. Three years ago, when he'd found blessed numbness in a bottle, Mosby had grabbed him by the scruff and dragged him out and forced him to live again. Mosby had even, at times since, made him rejoice to be alive. And then, on the previous sunny afternoon, from the prick of his own pain and his driven quest for vengeance, Mosby had had him marched into the street from the jail and been prepared to hang him.

Mosby and life and death were knotted about him like a cat's cradle holding him fast.

No feelings seemed to be left to him except the two extremes of pain and love. That's all he felt when he looked at his father aging before his eyes, steadily and noticeably graying, rail-thin, sometimes acting similarly to what he'd been before, but more often off his head and apt to do and say crazy things.

Those two entwined emotions were all he felt when he looked at the cold-blooded bounty hunter Call had become, a man now willing to do pretty much anything as long as it paid. Not all that long ago, he and Hannah and Call had been young and optimistic and full of life and joy.

Pain and love were all he felt when he looked at the cesspit Curtis Wells had become and knew the impossibility of his ever leaving. Not with the graves of his mother and sister in the yard beside the church he'd helped build in fairer days. Not since his father would never consent to leave his cobweb-strewn press or budge far from the dirty, echoing rooms first his mother, then Hannah had made a vibrant home for them both.

Not with Mosby's cat's cradle ensnaring him.

Pain and love were all he seemed capable of feeling any more, the one emotion making the other ever worse, the two inextricable.

In the night's cold stillness, Mosby's fading voice was a slip of sound: "Go away, Austin. I fired you. You were the only man I believed in, the only man I knew would guard my back. You robbed me of the one person in the world I could trust. You robbed me worse than those sons-o'-bitches cowards did."

The voice slid off into silence. Austin simply stood, staring with that sightless vision that showed nothing but grayness, feeling nothing but those two blighted emotions tangled together into a lump in his gut. When he was sure Mosby was asleep, he unbuckled his gunbelt and hung it over the bedpost. He turned down the wick on the lamp so dark settled in muffling velvet around him. He left the rest of his clothes on, not caring about the dried mud on his boots as he lay down on top of the covers behind Mosby. He slid his arms carefully around the man's sleep-heavy body, easing his own body close against the length of Mosby's back. He laid his head on the down pillow and settled his cheek against the dirty hair, inhaling the lingering stink of Mosby's torment and vengeful rage.

Mosby stirred and muttered wordless protest.

"Go to sleep, Clay. You're safe, at least for tonight."

He gathered Mosby's hand into his larger one and felt the fingers intertwine with his in unthinking response. He lifted his head to press his lips to the cool skin below the wound on Mosby's temple, next to his closed eye. Mosby sighed and settled, falling deeper into sleep. Unconsciously, Mosby knew him and still trusted.

He didn't double-deal Mosby. But he knew it would be a long time, if ever, before the conscious, rational Mosby trusted him again.

And it was at least true he hadn't been there when Mosby had needed him most. Mosby had lain hurt and cold on the floor, defenseless, vulnerable in a way that awakened all the deepest killing-ground furies in him, fed all those unspoken nightmares. Mosby had lain there as incapable of helping Taylor nearby as he had been to succor himself. All that time, Austin had been safe and warm in his own bed. Oblivious.

Austin faced his own demons of helplessness and revived memories. Of the anguish when his mother had died and no one, not the doctor, not even his father, whom he had still thought could do anything, had been able to stop it happening. The greater horror when he'd returned home to find Hannah dead and the world as he'd known it shattered, and himself as helpless as anyone else--as his father or Mosby--to mend any of it. Helpless as he'd watched his father's subsequent loss of touch with reality. Helpless in a drowning wash of fury at Call for having failed to protect Hannah and for riding away before Austin returned, having left even before Hannah was buried, uncaring of any pain but his own. Helpless as he'd watched the town transmute into a hellhole while Mosby drove himself and everyone within reach with a bizarre vision of molding it into an Atlanta of the West.

Helpless as he'd watched the flickers of humanity in Mosby sink to ashes without Hannah to fan them. Helpless even to understand himself as he'd accepted a place as Mosby's gun and helped him reach for his ephemeral, impossible dream.

Mosby was the only one of them left who was capable of dreaming. Didn't that make him special in some way? Or was he just crazier than the rest of them?

He felt helpless again, this time to alter Mosby's suspicion of him, the loss of trust he'd have to fight to retrieve--if he could find the will and energy to struggle for this last tenuous goal of his own. Wouldn't be an easy fight, even if he took up the cudgels. It was, after all, also true he'd used his position as sheriff to line his pockets with bribes. He'd accepted money whenever it was offered. The hundred dollars he'd taken from the McSween brothers to let them out of jail had seemed no different from all the previous instances: until matters escalated and a pain-lashed Mosby had been set on hanging him before Call unexpectedly saved the day.

No amount of money could have cajoled him into releasing the McSweens if he'd had an inkling they'd return to terrorize Mosby. But no one, least of all Mosby, was likely to believe him. Even his father, despite having been willing to die to protect him, hadn't quite believed he was innocent.

Mosby's soft breathing was the only sound in the room. Austin shut his eyes and let the scent and the sound and the familiar heaviness of the warm body snugged tightly against his own fill his empty senses. Pain and love seemed to be all he was capable of feeling, and the two always went hand-in-hand these days. He expected they always would.

:::::::

He rose at dawn while the town was still quiet. He extricated himself from Mosby's unconscious form and pulled the covers over Mosby's bare shoulders. Mosby didn't stir, though his eyes under the pale lids moved rapidly. Austin buckled on his gunbelt and ran his hands over his hair, pushing it back from his face, before donning his hat. His hair was as unwashed as Mosby's, but since he had no need of pomade to tame the straight hanks, it wasn't as unpleasant to the touch or smell. He could do with a bath today, though. Now he was no longer sheriff, he didn't have anything else to do with his day anyway.

He walked to the door and opened it. He paused, but managed with an effort to resist looking back at the bed. Squaring his shoulders, he left the room, threading his way down the stairs and out the door into a pallid half-light. The air smelled dewy. He looked a little blindly around the empty streets, feeling lost and more alone than he had since the awful day when he'd first viewed Hannah's grave and then gone home to nurse his father's mental and physical collapse.

Mosby had been at his back then, surprisingly. Not a wanted or welcome presence, but eventually accepted. Mosby seemed to feel an odd kind of responsibility for Josiah and even for him, as though Mosby had been the one married to Hannah rather than Call. He'd become Mosby's lawman and Josiah had been made into a kind of mad puppet-mayor. Josiah wasn't much use for the most part, but Mosby paid him a good wage for doing mostly nothing, and it gave Josiah the dignity and independence he'd never be able to claim for himself again.

It was a mark of how far gone Mosby had been the day before that he'd even threatened to shoot Josiah.

Call hated Mosby with a passion he displayed toward nothing else these days. He hated Josiah's being Mosby's mayor and Austin's being Mosby's sheriff, but Call didn't go through any of those first two years with them. He wasn't there to see Josiah at his worst, or to help.

Austin became aware of eyes watching him and his gaze sharpened with the sixth sense he'd developed as sheriff. He picked out the figure leaning against the wall of Twyla's opposite, in the alley's deep shadow. He noted the nonchalant stance and the casual intensity of the stare. His gut tightened, and he turned his eyes away as he walked down the steps to the street and headed for his room.

Spurs jingled loudly in the quiet as Call fell into step beside him. Austin ignored him, narrowing his mind to thinking about nothing except a couple of hours sleep, then the bath house, then check on his father as he always did. He'd clean out his desk in the jailhouse after that. And then...well, there was always the Number 10. And Twyla's. Booze and whores could be depended on to get a man through the day without badgering memories.

"So, that's the secret of Mosby's hold over you, huh?"

He ignored the needling voice from long practice, making sure only that he didn't unconsciously hasten his steps so it looked like he was running away.

"I never thought you were one of them kind, Austin. Just shows how little you know a man. Knew you bent over backwards to do Mosby's bidding with the town and his bullying everyone, but it never occurred to me you'd be bending over and letting him fuck you, too."

Austin's hands clenched, but he kept his eyes ahead, fixed on the roughly painted clapboard building that was his destination.

"Fuck off, Call. You don't know a damn thing about anything."

"Saw you go into Mosby's last night. Watched you pull the curtains across the windows in his room up there. Saw the light go out an hour or so later. And here you are, not leaving till dawn. You oughta be more careful, Austin. Folks'll talk."

He stopped perforce. His fingers were aching, and he unclenched them with the calm patience he'd learned to draw on in dealing with his unstable father and all the rest of the shit that had happened since Hannah's death. Hitting Call would be satisfying on a lot of levels, but he didn't think he had the energy in him even to do that much.

Call, seen from the corner of his eye, was lounging beside him, thumbs hooked over his gunbelt. Call's stare was as sharp and inquisitive as it always had been. That clever mind of his that Hannah had loved and his father still did, the mind that had out-thought Austin constantly and always would, was undoubtedly making connections most people would miss--unless things were pointed out to them.

"Josiah know the coin you use to pay for that shiny badge you flash around?" Call's voice was deceptively casual, at odds with the razor-edged gaze.

Austin turned his head at last and looked down into those challenging eyes. He'd once counted Newt Call as his brother. His sister's beloved husband, his father's beloved--most beloved, in some ways--son. His own closest friend and seeming brother.

But it was Call who'd deserted them and Mosby who stayed.

"You intending to tell him?"

Call's eyes dipped. If there were any tender feelings whatsoever left in this dirty, callous, barely recognizable man, Austin thought they were probably centered on Josiah. No one, not even Austin, could mention Hannah in Call's hearing with impunity. Somewhere, however, in that hardened shell Call had become, there must linger the knowledge that Hannah would never forgive anyone who hurt her father, no matter what, no matter who.

"Don't figure it would do him much good to know such a thing."

Reassured on the only point that mattered, Austin walked away. Behind him, Call's voice was still soft, but close enough for the words to drift to the ears they were meant for.

"It's a curious matter to think on, Mosby wanting Hannah all that time but he winds up poking her brother instead. I reckon it must be true all cats look the same in the dark."

He had an abrupt memory of Mosby a week ago, stretched below him on the bed and caught on a rift of pleasure. Mosby's left hand was flung above his head grasping the bedrail, the other clamped with bruising force on Austin's hip. He could see the sweat on Mosby's heaving chest beaded in the dark hair between his small nipples, and his damp red mouth, open, gasping. Golden-brown eyes stared up at him unwaveringly as Austin stroked his hands through the luxuriant black hair tumbled on the white pillow. He cradled the handsome face, feeling the beard soft against his gun-roughened palms as he stroked his thumbs across Mosby's cheekbones. The fine eyes stayed locked on his as he worked his cock in and out of the sweet familiarity of Mosby's body. Mosby crooked a strong leg up around his waist, pulling him closer, while Mosby's hard sex wept warm fluid onto both their straining bellies....

He felt a prickle of cold shiver down his back as though he were standing once again over the mound of a newly turned grave. With effort, he managed to make his legs move, carrying him forward, away both from where Call stood and where Mosby lay.

"You don't know fuck-all about it, Call."

He didn't care if his low words reached Hannah's husband or not. He cared only that Call had stopped following him and he could move alone toward the loneliness of the room that wasn't a home, but was where he lived.

All four of them together had been robbed when Hannah died. He reckoned an entanglement of pain and love was all they had left between any of them.


End file.
